Portable lighting sources are useful in many contexts, including to illuminate spaces that lack an operational fixed lighting fixture therein as well as for lighting places that normally do not have a source of light therein or nearby.
Some lighting fixtures are equipped with long extension cords to provide power to the same from a power outlet some distance away from the place in which the light is needed. Other lighting fixtures are powered by internal direct current (DC) power sources such as batteries. These lights are generally portable and most often rely on fluorescent or incandescent or light emitting diode (LED) light sources.
Each of these light sources generates heat when it is powered and emitting light, in fact some light sources such as incandescent lights rely on the heating effect of current in the light filament as a requisite to generating any light at all. Therefore, incandescent lights are by definition not very energy efficient as they dissipate a substantial fraction of their energy as non-visible heat radiation. Fluorescent lights generate less heat than incandescent lights but suffer from large physical size bulbs, require electrical ballast components operating at high voltages, emitting substantial electromagnetic noise as a result. In addition, incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs are not very mechanically resistant to shocks so they break relatively easily if dropped or used in hostile environments.
LED lights employ small solid state diodes that can be made more robust to mechanical shock and take up far less space that the other types of light sources. However, until recently LED lights have provided very little illumination intensity and were not practical for use as light sources to light up a work space. So far there have been no practical applications of LED lighting that could effectively provide bright lighting intensities while controlling the heating or overheating of the LED diodes, which can be damaged if temperatures above 90 degrees Celsius develop in the lighting fixture. Providing stable electrical to the LED circuitry was also not well developed. Other challenges such as mechanical stabilization of the lighting sources have also remained open in the prior art.
The present disclosure solves several problems of the known art, especially in the context of LED light sources for multi-LED lighting apparatus that is suitable for use in harsh environments and is cost effective to use and manufacture.